inFAMOUS: Uprising
by WhiteZephyr
Summary: Seven years have passed since the Empire Event, and the DUP have moved in, asserting their control throughout the city of Seattle. One of their "bio-terrorist" prisoners happens to be a young woman named Joan. Stuck in stasis for years, Joan awakens to a world that isn't the one she remembers, and doesn't recall her. But it's every bit as dangerous, and her powers are weak...
1. Prologue

inFAMOUS:

Uprising

Prologue

The night was frigid and cold—colder than what the natives of Seattle were accustomed to. The crisp, withering air shook the bones of the civilians and rattled the teeth of the few geniuses daring enough to wear a T-shirt or less. Many hurried home with the promise of electricity and warmth, while still others found their comforts in frayed cardboard boxes tucked in the corners of back alleys with barrels of dwindling ash pathetically attempting to grow into an open flame.

Lucky enough to be on a patrol that night was a man called Lawrence Church. His employment with the Department of Unified Protection was relatively recent, and the shitty nights he'd patrol that made his toes feel like icicles dangling off his feet made him want to reconsider his decision, but it wasn't like he had much choice. The DUP were the only ones who'd employ him, and the economy sucked, so it was all he had to go on. Besides, he had a wife and two kids to take care of.

That responsibility weighed on him about as heavily as the near-arctic chill, but at least the uniform helped. It wasn't made for the weather, but some new ones were coming in. Until then, he'd gone out of his way to line his colours with a few layers of shirts and a sweater. It limited his movement, he knew, and his SO wouldn't be too thrilled that he wasn't in regulated apparel, but dammit it kept the cold at bay.

Lawrence could see his breath from under his helmet and shook his head at the fading fog. The weather had even stuck his rifle a few times, which would hinder him further in a fight, but chances were his opponents would have jammed weapons as well. And while he wasn't going to rely on that slim chance, he hoped he wouldn't see any action.

His heart suddenly lurched unpleasantly when he spotted three men casually strolling down the sidewalk as if it was the middle of the day without a care in the world. His first thought was that they could be bio-terrorists, but then his eyes wandered onto the patches on their jackets: an apparently painted on white skull with fire leaking from its mouth and eyes. One look at that and Lawrence knew those guys weren't a threat, but their enforcer was. And if Lawrence dared tell them to scurry along or any of that shit, chances are he'd get a front-row seat to his own death. Thankful for the helmet that hid his face, Lawrence merely walked past them and used all of his willpower not to look at any of the three watching him with a superior glint in their eyes.

The people of Seattle knew that gang—hell, the entire state of Washington did. People called them the Plague Brigade, but that was just a playful moniker to make them seem less threatening. They were really called Horsemen, and boasted having an enforcer that embodied all four of the mythical, legendary figures. Lawrence hadn't seen the enforcer himself, but he'd heard stories, and he didn't much like to dwell on them. Since they were brought into the gang five years ago, the Horsemen had been focused on bio-terrorists, like the DUP. That led to a bit of conflict, and often times any that escaped the grasp of Lawrence's employers ended up using their "_abilities_" to wreak havoc throughout Seattle.

The enforcer was no different, but a hundred times more powerful than all of them put together. Rumour was they once lost an entire squad to only the enforcer, and their charred bodies had to be recovered with hazmat suits. Just gently caressing the remaining skin of one of those corpses with a thinly gloved hand felt like the equivalent of sticking one's hand into a fiery inferno. Lawrence knew a guy who was supposedly on the task force to recover the bodies, and he never did quite explain how he got those scars on his hands. Poor guy was out of a job for weeks before he could so much as hold a knife again.

When the Plague Brigade passed, Lawrence checked the clock installed into his visor. Only another fifteen minutes and he'd get to go home to the wife and kids. He picked up his pace, enlightened by the thought, and continued on through Seattle's streets. Warm meal, hot bed... He was glad his helmet only had a camera to see what he was looking at and not some sort of a mind reading contraption that'd let his SO know his mind wandered off... At least, he hoped there was nothing like that.

Ten minutes passed at a snail's pace for Lawrence, and with only five minutes left he felt brazen enough to make his way back to his assigned precinct within the DUP. He'd drop his stuff off and get home. Easy peasy. And there wasn't even a minor incident on that patrol. Although he probably would have felt like time had gone faster if there had been something—.

A crash nearby jarred Lawrence from his thoughts, and he quickly sought to see where the sound had originated. _Please just be some punks throwing rocks at a window...!_ Lawrence realized he'd spoken too soon about his patrol. Two minutes left and he'd just found out he was working overtime. He spotted a fat, slithering vine coiled around the support between two windows on a building. Already he could see a few DUP vans speeding towards it. Lawrence knew immediately that a bio-terrorist had escaped their watchful eye.

Swearing loudly, Lawrence forced the thoughts of comfort from his mind and leapt onto one of the few vacated bars jutting from one of the vans. A few other DUP soldiers greeted him. He tried to reply but was mesmerized by the ever-growing vine rather than the velcro name tags located over their hearts. They took the corners at breakneck speeds that had Lawrence wondering if he'd lose his grip and fly into a streetlamp or something. His palms were sweating under his gloves as they pursued the one making the vines. He thought he could see the bio-terrorist using one of them to get from building to building...

"Go! Go! Go!" The van lurched to a halt, but soldiers were already piling out of the vehicle even before then, rifles raised. Lawrence gulped and followed. The vines had stopped growing, but as they pushed into a warehouse where one of the superior officers had spotted the bio-terrorist enter, Lawrence realized that the building was consumed with overgrowth.

Quietly, Lawrence followed a squad to the eastern area. One of the soldiers muttered something about not chopping their way through, or else the bio-terrorist would know where they were coming from. Lawrence grumbled an agreement, so they took their time picking their way through the slithering vines.

One of the soldiers was coordinating with the other team heading through the western area to sneak up on the bio-terrorist. Lawrence followed him and tried to ignore the unnatural growth spurts the greenery was going through. The weather was now far from his mind, as were the comforts he'd hoped to have by then, replaced now by the shaking of his hands and they erratic way his eyes searched the premises. Lawrence had never once seen a bio-terrorist, and while he'd watched the news seven years ago when he'd only just begun to date his wife and learned about the Electric Man and the destruction of Empire City, he never thought he'd see it in real life. It was like stepping into a movie or a game or some shit like that.

Through all that thinking Lawrence did, neither he nor anyone ahead of him noticed how their numbers had begun to dwindle. Their command centre had lost contact with the guys now dangling from the roof with vines slipping in under their helmets, strangling them and scrambling the signal to boot. Lawrence suddenly felt the hairs on his neck prick upwards and automatically turned to see where the breeze had come from. The feed of missing soldiers from his helmet reached the command centre, and immediately the soldiers were aware of their situation.

They clustered closer together. Lawrence wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of that warehouse—shit, he'd take that freezing cold in his underwear if it meant to get out!—but abandoning everyone with a camera strapped to his head was out of the question, so he sauntered on with the rest of the DUP soldiers. Although his finger was the closest to the trigger.

The soldiers quickly discovered that the bio-terrorist was back against the wall of the warehouse, so there'd be no sneaking up on him. Gulping, Lawrence flexed his fingers and slipped his hand onto the trigger of his rifle.

Immediately, the bio-terrorist's vines leapt upward and latched onto the rifles, yanking them hard out of the grasp of the remaining seven soldiers. A few scrambled away in an effort to escape, but with a wave of the bio-terrorist's hand they were shot upward by the vines and caught by the ones hanging from the roof. Lawrence watched, terrified and rooted to the spot, as those men dangled in the air, screaming for their lives. The bio-terrorist clenched his fist, and on command the vines wrapped around their torsos and squeezed like a snake who'd coiled around a mouse. The men's strangled cries from their radios were transmitted into Lawrence's ears, as well as their death throes. He couldn't move. It took every bit of willpower even to stop himself from fainting. It wasn't a few seconds later that blood rained down from above onto his uniform.

And then, the roof exploded.

Lawrence and the remaining soldiers were blasted back into the shelves consumed with overgrowth. Most found their end then and there with fractured skulls. Lawrence and another soldier were lucky enough to be alive, but the second was soon lost to a surge of flame. Lawrence was the fortunate one to have been blown into cover of the inferno. He clutched his head, his ears ringing loudly as the grogginess attempted to pass. He clung to the remaining bits of himself that were conscious and forced himself to keep his eyes open. Maybe if he could just get some information for the DUP, he could at least have his family taken care of, if he didn't live through this.

Mustering whatever remained of his courage, Lawrence peered towards the bio-terrorist and where that blast had come from, hoping his helmet cam was getting what he was seeing. The bio-terrorist wasn't alone, and he'd been easily overpowered by a person in a faded brown leather jacket, and on the back of that jacket was the Horseman logo. Fires were flickering around the warehouse and licking the vines away until they were nothing more than charred bits of nothing. The bio-terrorist was on his knees, his fists caught by the hands of who Lawrence could only guess was the famous enforcer of the Horsemen.

With a clear view of them both, Lawrence saw that the bio-terrorist was in his mid-thirties, like himself, with dirt smeared across his unkempt face. He was in an orange jumpsuit that he'd seen a few other bio-terrorists wearing back in some prison compounds the DUP had across the city. Otherwise, beyond his light brown hair and defiant eyes, and his "abilities", there was nothing really incredible about him. Hell, he could've walked down the street in civilian clothes and Lawrence wouldn't have a second thought about him. Or a first, come to think of it. Just how many bio-terrorists looked as harmless as him? How many were still roaming the streets of Seattle? Those thoughts unsettled Lawrence—that his wife could be going to work or his kids to school with those... _things_.

He only now thought of them as "things" because of the enforcer. From his angle, Lawrence saw the enforcer had bright green eyes and clumps of short, thick red hair sticking out from under the black hood they wore, which was connected to a hoodie underneath their leather jacket, and a biker mask with a skull's jaw motif was hiding the lower-half of their face. Their dark blue jeans were faded around the knees, and in their black, knee-high leather boots, Lawrence could see their shins were padded. But the reason for his uneasiness with the enforcer was their hands. The enforcer had caught the bio-terrorist's punches while Lawrence was recovering from the ringing in his ears, but they'd caught him with what looked like molten rock acting as a sort of armour or reinforcement for the enforcer. He could see the fire pulsating beneath the rock—smell the bio-terrorist's flesh burning. God, Lawrence just wanted to get out of there. But his ringing head and the potential death lingering ahead kept him rooted to the spot.

The enforcer leaned close to the bio-terrorist. Lawrence held his breath.

"Merrick Pierson."

A name. Just a name. The name of the bio-terrorist. Lawrence clenched his fists and realized how sticky they were. The sweltering heat inside the warehouse was making him reconsider the layers of clothing he had under his colours.

The bio-terrorist, face contorted in pain, sneered up at the enforcer. "W-What about... me...?"

"Davin Warrick's giving you a choice, Merrick," the enforcer said evenly. "Stay with these sparkling examples of humanity, or be part of those who really appreciate your gifts."

Lawrence saw the enforcer's grip lessen, and then the molten rock shattered and hit the floor. He spotted fingerless leather gloves on the enforcer's hands. Merrick gasped in relief when the enforcer released his fists and cradled his scarred hands to his chest. He glared indignantly at the enforcer.

"And why... should I come... and run with someone like you...?" he rasped in challenge.

The enforcer tilted their head left. "You're mistaking me for someone who desires to work with you, Merrick," they replied in the same tone as before. The enforcer wasn't offended by his remark. Rather, they acted indifferent, like he'd just asked them the time of day. "But Davin wants someone like you on his side. Think of it as an investment into a better future. One without four blank walls and the DUP looking to create a zoo of freak shows."

Merrick's nostrils flared at the mention of the DUP. Lawrence sidled into cover a bit more, suddenly wary of his position. "Someone... like me...?" he repeated.

"Someone who's looking to do as much damage to the government's dogs as possible." The enforcer offered their hand, which Merrick stared at. "Choose. This hand will either welcome you or turn you into a broken pile of bones."

With a considerable amount of effort to ignore the pain, Merrick grasped the enforcer's hand, and he was hefted onto his feet. The enforcer clapped him on the back.

"Welcome to the Horsemen, Merrick," they said. "There's a van waiting outside. Get there before the DUP have their reinforcements here."

Merrick nodded and limped to where the enforcer had pointed, but stopped midway to look back at his new comrade, who'd taken out and lit a cigarette.

"Are you... the only one?" he managed.

The enforcer snuck the cigarette under the mask without even bothering to lift it. "Nah," they replied. "There's one or two more in the gang."

"So... how am I... going to find you again?"

"You won't. I'll find you, if I need you." They took a long drag. "Which I won't." Smoke escaped through the enforcer's nose, but as they tapped the ashes away, they added, "But if you're sent to find me, most people call me Zombie. Others... well..." They took another puff and let the smoke trail out of their nose again. "If someone higher-up ever tells you to find me, like your new friend Davin Warrick... Ask for Joan."

Merrick nodded and hurried to the van. Finishing her cigarette, she flicked it in Lawrence's direction. The butte landed near his leg. He inhaled and squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she wouldn't have seen him.

"And you, behind those barrels." Lawrence's heart hammered in his chest. He could feel tears begin to brim when she mentioned him. God, why now? Why _now_?! "You just make sure your SO got whatever you caught here. Don't underestimate us again, you ignorant fucks."

An explosion of flame erupted throughout the warehouse as the enforcer launched herself into the air on a spurt of flame. Lawrence didn't dare watch her retreat, didn't grab his rifle and sure as shit didn't make a move until the reinforcements finally got to the warehouse after what seemed like an eternity. Absolute, undiluted fear shot through his system.

Lawrence Church was the luckiest goddamn man alive. _Alive_.


	2. Awaken

Chapter One:

Awaken

_"So, as of now, I don't exist?"_

_ "I don't give my name to crazy people. _Especially_ when they run around in skimpy outfits. And when they have tongues like _that_. Maybe you should just close your mouth, 'kay?"_

_ "I'm serious! Go! I'll be fine!"_

_ "So did I. I mean, you don't really expect to still be breathing when you blow yourself up, right?"_

_ "Hey, I've been back from the dead once. Who's to say I can't do it a second time?"_

_ "Angel? Oh, please. That guy was nothing more than scum."_

_ "I won't. When have _I_ ever done anything stupid, Cole?"_

_ "I'm not... letting anyone else... get hurt!"_

_ "Major flaw in us... Kayce! We... never plan ahead... which means you never... saw this coming!"_

My left hand twitched slightly in its attempt to move. My head, searing with residual headache pain, slowly fell back. I couldn't feel; only understand I was moving. I couldn't breathe; only know I was alive.

Alive... but not living.

"—shutting down Curdan Cay." I heard a voice unfamiliar to me. I strained to hear, but could only catch snippets of a conversation.

"I know..." A reply. Someone else was here... Where was "here"? "It's that bio-terrorist... the one... Augustine... Delsin Rowe..."

Delsin Rowe? Augustine? More... _confusion_. Those people... who were they? The ones outside...

_Where am I?_

"—need to get out... coming to free them..."

_Free who?_

I vaguely remembered the dream from before. It felt like an eternity to watch, but... now it felt like a mere second had passed.

My hand twitched again. It didn't go unnoticed by the two conversing nearby. I fought and struggled to stay awake, clinging to the voices instead of the dream. The voices became the only certainty—the only chance—I was awake.

The voices came closer.

"—terminate program?"

"No!" The voices became clearer. I wasn't just picking up on a few small things anymore. That was a relief. I was really waking up. "Do you know how long this project's been active?! Shutting it down loses us nearly five decades of research!"

"Which means nothing if they get out! I'll shut it down myself!"

"You'll only be shutting this one down then. The mainframe was in Empire City. So unless you're planning to take the time to shut each one off individually, _we need to go_!"

My head slowly tilted to the side. _Empire City? _I thought. _That's... I know that place._

"... I suppose you're right. The door to this thing—." A hand slammed near my head. The echo told me that I was in some sort of... box? Machine, maybe. "—won't open unless from the outside. And there's a code to it. Chances are, K-423 will drown before she wakes up."

_Die?_

I couldn't hear anything anymore. The voices had stopped. But sounds were still there. I began to rely on them instead of the absent voices in the hopes I'd stay awake. I could feel my heartbeat pick up at the thought of... of _dying_, and not even knowing where I was—_who_ I was!

No... I knew who I was. It was slowly coming back to me. But... was what I saw a dream? Memories?

_I need to wake up._

With a monumental effort, I forced my eyes open. They immediately stung from the liquid substance within the... the machine. But even though it hurt, even though I felt like closing them just to relieve the pain, I needed to see.

Outside, past the blue-green hue of the screen of the machine, was a long white table with various tanks stacked on top. Medical records and red file folders were scattered against the counters, each with numbers and letters that meant complete gibberish to me.

_Get out of here._

Yeah. I needed to escape.

I took a deep breath out of the mask feeding air to me and clenched my hands into fists. I needed to break the glass, if what that man from before said was true... So with barely any velocity to work with inside, I tried to figure out how to do that. Maybe there was an emergency hatch, or a fallback program I could work with to force an override...

It was at that very second that I lamented my lack of computer skills.

And then I felt something... building up. Almost like rage, but without the raw emotions. Without the heaviness. It built up in my chest, warm at first, but then it began to burn.

I tried to scream. The mask stopped me from doing that. The sounds outside—I could hear a heart monitor pick up its pace. The heat got so bad my hands had begun clawing at my chest.

And then it burst.

_/-\_

I was in a daze for the next few days. The burning sensation had remained, even after it had exploded the machine I'd been trapped in. I could hardly remember much after that beyond taking a blood-stained lab coat off a corpse and staggering my way out of what they called Curdan Cay. A prison of sorts, but not like I'd ever seen... or remembered.

I walked down a desolate road completely barefoot. The flesh on the soles of my feet were raw and tender, and they were being dragged from the effort of walking, but it was better than when I'd first picked a direction and started walking. I fell a few times and scraped the skin from my knees. It was too clear to me that I wasn't exactly used to walking... which confused me. Because the dream—memories?—insisted I'd been awake and walking for years.

God, the heat. It almost seemed to intensify and then slowly decay, but it would return with a vengeance. I fell into the grass in the ditch on the side of the road once and used a tree to support me while I stood. But where I touched the bark, it had almost seemed to melt. Embers dotted the edges of the blackness that burned it. The tree fell when I was further down the road.

What was I, stupid? I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was I needed help. I was too weak and desperate to do anything on my own. And the heat—the relentless, decimating heat—was building up again. I was sweating, but it was hidden by the cool, cascading rain. My feet and hands were freezing. I was exhausted, starving... The isolation and emptiness of that tank-like machine I'd been "stored" in suddenly seemed much less confining with the promise of sleep.

_So much pain... So much _pain_..._

It wasn't long before I could hear the roar of engines in the distance. I'd seen a few vans with the same sounds pass before and it had been enough to duck into the woods to avoid them, but that was when I wasn't so distracted with the burning. And ahead I could see a large factory, no doubt for fish since it was near the edge of a cliff. Further down was a colourful longhouse with people casually chatting and enjoying each other's company under a veranda shielding them from the receding rain.

I paused in the slowing surge of droplets and drew the lab coat more tightly around my freezing and burning body. My insides were on fire, but my outsides were begging for warmth. Complicated and annoying. I wanted it to end.

The engines were coming closer. Mustering my strength, I made to head for the factory. I was too slow, and I knew it. The vans carrying the men with guns would be on me soon.

I could dimly remember them from my escape. So intent on catching me... Why? New fear drove me forward. I thought about cutting through the woods but saw a fence guarding the factory, and even if I'd melted the fence it was likely those men would see the glow...

_So now what?_

More noise. More rumblings. More pain.

It took me a second to realize I'd stumbled into the middle of the road. I was too tired to keep moving, too hungry to think beyond the pain rising in my chest. And the vans were coming. I begged my legs to move, but they were rooted to the concrete. It got to the point where I just gave up. The pain was too much. Too intense... Too much.

The vans screeched loudly around the bend and hurdled towards me. One skidded around me vivaciously , and two more parked behind me. Immediately a dozen men leapt out of the vehicles and had their weapons pointed at me. One bald man in a long trenchcoat strode towards me, eyeballing me. I was too weak to stare him down. Instead, I fixed my gaze on his boots. New, from the looks of them.

"You need to come with us," he called. "We won't hurt you. We want to keep you safe."

My gaze rose from his boots to the guns. Safe? Is that why they're pointing guns at me? I peered at the people at the longhouse who had halted their conversations to watch the scene two-hundred feet away unfold. One man in a red beanie and jean vest was just exiting the longhouse, and was approached by another man.

The examination I was doing halted as soon as I noticed the bald man began to approach closer to me. "We have no intention of hurting your kind, miss. But we must keep everyone safe."

The burning rose. One of my hands reached up to cling at my chest. I gritted my teeth and withheld a cry of pain.

"You... want to keep... everyone safe?" I inquired. "Then... step... away...!"

"Don't use your powers, miss. We'll be forced to act."

It burned. God, it _burned_. It was as if someone had stabbed a white-hot iron blade into my chest and twisted it around for fun.

"Not... my choice..." I looked at the bald man desperately. "It's burning... so much...!"

"Miss, don't you dare—!"

"I can't believe you Dupes are still trying to round up us Conduits, even after the good old government's cut your funding."

The man with the red beanie. Up close, I could see he was slender, and younger than I'd figured he was. He had a cocky grin that seemed stuck to his face, as if he'd been born with that look, and a black and light blue tribal tattoo on his left arm. Underneath his jean vest was a grey sweater and a red plaid shirt. His jeans were a bit torn up, and his sneakers appeared well-worn... He was the very picture of teenage rebellion, although I doubted he was as young as a teen.

But there was something about the man in the red beanie that made the bald man jump and draw his pistol from the holster on his hip. "Dammit! It's Rowe!"

The guns immediately turned from me to him. He smirked at them and crossed his arms. "Wow," he said sarcastically. "You guys know me by heart now? I'm touched. Really, I am. But you'll leave this Conduit alone. If you do..." He shrugged nonchalantly. "I'll let you go without a scratch. If you don't... You're going to see why even Augustine couldn't beat me."

"Don't listen to him!" the bald man shouted at the soldiers. "He's the bio-terrorist who ruined our progress for the last seven years! He's nothing but a punk piece of shit!"

I stumbled and fell to my knees. It was too much... Too much pain... Too much heat... It burned...!

The man in the red beanie's eyes widened. "Um... Not to alert you guys or anything, but maybe you should, um, get a medic for her?"

For a second time, the heat burst. I saw the man in the red beanie disappear in a puff of smoke, and instantly I felt hands on me, even though the soldiers and the bald man were tossed by the shockwave into the woods and hard into their vehicles. A hand grabbed mine, and instantly a new pain surged. I felt like I was coming apart, and then I felt... someone. In my head, poking through... everything. I could see what they were seeing. The dreams... They came back stronger. Now I _knew_ they were memories. But so much was confusing. So much didn't make sense. It didn't belong.

But a third burst fired from my body, and the hands flew off. I collapsed on the concrete, gasping for air and feeling my energy drain from me. My eyes fought to stay open, but I couldn't see. My hands slid against the ground, but I couldn't feel. It goes without saying that I wasn't thinking straight either.

I could sense someone nearby. He groaned audibly and slowly made his way onto his knees. And soon I heard footsteps running towards us. I managed to focus my eyes onto the man in the red beanie, who was leaning over me in a daze.

I knew it was him. He was the one who'd looked into my head. He was the guy... that Delsin Rowe character I'd heard those men talk about a few days ago, when I'd just awoken in that tank.

What was his importance? Who was he, exactly?

Those thoughts were too much for me, and my eyes closed fully as a result. No doubt the soldiers were dead... I'd killed the others in close proximity to me when I'd escaped. I didn't mean to kill. I didn't mean to hurt them. It was just happening.

So I hoped with every fibre of my being that Rowe could be my ally.

I feebly tried to move. I felt a hand on my shoulder briefly. It felt like the same one that had grabbed my hand. Rowe.

"H-Help..." I whispered feebly.

And then it all went dark.


End file.
